I was looking for a quick manicure last night so I combined sparkle and matte textures to create this design.  Matte topcoat on top of glitter isn’t something that naturally springs to mind, but it’s really effective and can be very chic.

I used:
OPI Nail Envy
OPI DS Glow
Dior Gris Montaigne
Mavala Sparkling Bronze
Seche Vite
Rimmel Pro Matte top coat

 

After a couple of base coats of Nail Envy, I used the dark grey Dior polish on all but my ring fingers – 2-3 coats.  I added the OPI Glow polish to my ring fingers 2-3 coats again.  The Dior polish isn’t very old but it’s gone super thick and sticky – not great to work with.  I think I’m going to have to add some thinner to that one. Next up I used Seche Vite to smooth the polish (mostly for the grey which was very uneven) and to quick dry everything.

I had to do a bit of clean up with a fine paintbrush dipped in acetone to clean up around my cuticles – the grey polish was a sticky nightmare! I have a couple of shot-sized plastic cups that I use to decant a bit of remover in so it doesn’t all evaporate and so I can’t knock over a full bottle!

Then I did an ombre fade with the Mavala glitter to the tips of the grey nails.  To do this you scrape virtually all of the polish off back into the bottle so you have an almost dry brush.  Paint up your nails from no more than 3/4 way to the cuticle and for each coat start a bit higher up so more glitter ends up on your free edge. I did 3-4 passes with the glitter.

Next step was to another thin coat of Seche to smooth it all out (there were a few brush marks from the dry glitter brush), then 2 coats of the matte top coat on the grey nails only.

And there we have it! What do you think? The Glow polish matches the glitter really well and despite my issues with the grey polish it looks good in matte.

One last thing, if you are interested in some of the base products I use all the time – Nail Envy, Seche Vite and Hard As Wraps – they are all included in Boots 3-for-2 offer I saw in store last night.  You could save £8-9 just on those three products.